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Author Discusses How People Can’t Avoid Dogs

It’s Day 3 of Ken Foster’s interview. The author of, among other books, The Dogs Who Found Me, is a delightful, caring man who opened his heart to us just like he has opened his home and heart to the many dogs who found him.

If you’re just joining us, you may want to scroll back a few days and read the interview from the beginning. Meanwhile, we left off where Ken was just saying that one can’t live in our world without interacting with dogs.

Joy: What does that say about our society that you really can’t go through it without interacting with dogs now?

Ken: I don’t know what it says. To me, its like here they are. Theyre part of us. Theyre a part of our world and because they are social they dont stay in their own little space and wait for you to invite yourself in. They sort of scamper up to you and say, Im a dog and I live down the street from you. Hello.”

The other thing thats amazing, which is great and we see it more and more, is service dogs. You get on the subway in New York and there’s somebody, this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, there’s someone with a one hundred and fifty pound mixed Irish Wolfhound seizure dog. He was standing across the entire width of the subway car. And there were several people who were completely freaked out, including a nun who was sitting next to me and made me trade seats because she was afraid of the dog. And some people said, how did you get that dog in here? The woman who had it explained that this is my seizure dog and then people were very appreciative. They were very interested and amazed at this creature. The woman explained too that she had started training it when it was young and didn’t know what the mix was and she was a little horrified herself when it grew into a big dog. But after you’ve spent all that time with it and trained it you can’t be, too big, too bad.”

Joy: Lets go back to the point when youre having to trade seats with the nun. What does that say to you when someone is that afraid of a dog like that?

Ken: In some cases its because they’ve had a bad experience with a dog or so many people learn their fear of dogs from their parents. But what this nun said was that the church or at least some part of the church believes that the gift of being able to appreciate and understand animals is given by the Holy Ghost. She leaned over to me and said, I have not been given that gift yet.”

Join us tomorrow when Ken tells us about meeting the love of his life, the dog who changed his world — Duque.

In the meantime, check out Ken’s website or his Dogster pages for Brando, Zephyr and Sula.